


Dream On

by pixymisa, selecasharp



Category: Supernatural, The Wizard of Oz & Related Fandoms
Genre: Action, Dreamsharing, F/F, Romance, Some Humor, Supernatural Reverse Big Bang Challenge 2014
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-10
Updated: 2015-01-10
Packaged: 2018-03-06 22:20:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3150401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pixymisa/pseuds/pixymisa, https://archiveofourown.org/users/selecasharp/pseuds/selecasharp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charlie and Dorothy are trapped in their dreams, fighting to wake up. Of course it’s the poppies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dream On

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [and their eyes grew heavy](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/92246) by meesasometimes. 



> Written for the Supernatural Reverse Big Bang on Livejournal and crossposted to [LJ](http://teashopmuses.livejournal.com/85407.html).
> 
> Lyrics are from (what else?) "Dream On" by Aerosmith.

Inspired by this lovely piece of art by [meesasometimes](http://meesasometimes.livejournal.com/)!  


 **I.**  
 _Nobody knows where it comes and where it goes_

In her dream, Charlie is running. She’s back in the real world, or what used to be the real world, though she isn’t sure where. Some suburban hell, it looks like: she’s on a sidewalk, running past houses that all look like each other, with minivans and basketball hoops and white picket fences with the paint peeling. But one of them is different. One of them has blackout curtains on all the windows, and disconnected shadows moving around the grass. 

She rounds the corner of the house and there he is. It takes her a second, but then she places him: the teenaged vampire she’d taken out a few weeks (or was it months?) ago. He’s alive again, his hair standing several inches higher than she remembers, his all-black clothes hanging off his too-thin body. And every one of his shark teeth bared.

He snarls at her, lifting up a small body and biting down on the neck, hard. “Hey!” Charlie starts to shout, but then the vampire boy lets out a wail and spits out several fangs.

Charlie looks for her machete, but all she has in her hands are a game controller and a teacup. “Shit!” she says out loud, tossing both aside. 

“Sheeth mathe off thina!” the vampire shrieks, and throws the tiny body (way too tiny to be a real person, Charlie sees now) at her. She jumps back as the body shatters at her feet. China, she realizes, looking at the jagged white pieces. Snickering, she picks up the biggest piece and casually slices it across the boy’s throat. His head rolls off with only the tiniest splash of blood. Nothing like what she remembers of how it actually went down, but that doesn’t bother her. These kinds of things usually sort themselves out.

She leaves everything where it falls and moves on. There’s a door on the side of the house, and when she opens it, she finds one of the more beautiful parts of Oz behind it. Green grass, greener than anything she remembers seeing before, spreads out in rolling hills before her, and in the distance she can see an orchard, the trees laden with apples so big she can make out pinpricks of red and yellow and green even from here. Smiling, she steps through the door.

“Took you long enough,” Dorothy says, and Charlie’s heart skips a beat. Dorothy’s leaning against a fence, corn reaching up toward the sky behind her, and she’s smiling, her eyes lit up in the way that makes Charlie weak at the knees if she’s not ready for it. “You were the one who wanted to do it, Red.”

“I know,” Charlie says, her fingers itching to reach up and touch Dorothy’s cheek. “What was it I wanted to do again?”

“You wanted to solve the equation.” Dorothy’s eyes sparkle, and she pushes herself upright. “Come on. Better get to it.”

“I don’t understand the math,” Charlie confides as they walk. “You should be older. I mean, if you add thirty-five to twelve you come up with fifty-seven. No, forty-three. No, maybe it’s forty-seven. But you’re not that old. Are you?”

“It’s Oz,” Dorothy says, and she takes Charlie’s hand. Charlie closes his eyes, lacing her fingers with Dorothy’s. She doesn’t want to wake up, not yet. But when she opens her eyes, her hand is empty, and Dorothy’s gone. Charlie’s standing in a hallway made of of gray brick, and she can hear voices echoing up ahead of her.

She knows those voices.

Sam and Dean are sitting together on Sam’s bed, the television glowing, though Charlie can’t see what’s on the screen. “They’re disgusting,” Dean is saying, and Sam is shaking his head so hard his hair is whipping around his face.

“What’s up, bitches?” she says, sitting down between them. Sam’s hair is right there, and she reaches for it, running her fingers through the strands. It’s so long, she thinks. She ties a knot, then another, then another. It begins to take shape under her hands, and no matter how many knots she ties, there’s always more hair.

Sam turns to her, and she loses her grip on the macrame cat she’d been making. Sam's hair is back to its normal length, she sees. She’s almost sad about that. “Charlie, settle this. Which is grosser: onions or mushrooms?”

“It’s mushrooms,” Dean says immediately. “They’re fungus, dude, they’re gross.”

“No, it’s onions,” Sam argues. “Saute mushrooms in butter, they’re great. Onions just reek.”

“Onions are awesome, man. Cook them in butter, nothing better. Except burgers, which onions can go on.”

“So can mushrooms!”

They both look at her. “Well?” they ask together.

“They’re both good on pizza,” Charlie says, getting to her feet. “I’ll go make one. Hang on.”

She walks through the bunker halls toward the kitchen. She nearly trips on a tea service in the middle of the floor, and when she looks up, she’s not in the boys’ bunker anymore.

She’s in the hospital.

There are still holes in the walls, and splashes of rust-colored blood decorate the yawning hallway, but nothing is there. No vampires, no bodies, no weapons of any kind. There isn’t even any medical equipment. But the sign is still hanging at the end. 

“Fort Brennan Military Hospital,” Charlie whispers aloud. 

Slowly, she heads toward the patients’ room. She isn’t aware of walking, or even moving, but she still ends up there after what seems like no time at all. There are three beds inside, like always, and the curtains are drawn, obscuring her view of them. A vase of flowers, a scarlet spray against the unending white of the room, stands on the table next to the door. Trembling, she stops at the end of the closest bed, the one where her mother always lies.

Used to, Charlie remembers. She let her go. She let this whole dream go.

She looks down. She’s all in black again, the bandolier of ammo strung across her midsection, the gun hanging from her shoulder and banging on her hip. She’s even got the damned eyepatch. But she hasn’t has this dream — this _nightmare_ — since that whole thing with the djinn over a year ago. (Or has it been longer, now?)

“I shouldn’t be here,” she mumbles, tearing the eyepatch off her face and throwing it to the floor. Hands shaking, she reaches for the curtain. She doesn’t want to see her mother lying in that bed again, her face drawn and empty and not hers. But Charlie has to end this, somehow. She won’t let this nightmare back in, not after what she went through to get rid of it. 

She rips the curtain back. “I’m sorry, Mom, I—” 

It’s not her mother lying in the bed.

It’s Dorothy.

Her face is bruised and bloodied, her eyes purple and swollen, hair loose and straggling over sunken cheeks. She looks nothing like the Dorothy Charlie knows, the Dorothy Charlie’s been falling in love with a bit more every day; she looks small and vulnerable and _broken_ , like everything that made her Dorothy has been drained away. She looks like Charlie’s mother.

“No,” Charlie sobs, stumbling forward, reaching blindly for Dorothy’s hand. “No, not you too, I can’t—”

Something grabs her.

She slams into the far wall and slithers to the ground, the wind knocked from her. Sound beats through her, crashes and snarls and a thin high scream, as she struggles back to her feet. Her vision blurs, but she can still see them. Super-soldier vampires, at least a dozen of them, crowd the room, their faces all drawn back in snarls, red dripping down their chins. And in the bed, Dorothy is a bloody mess, her chest ripped open and her skin clawed apart, and her face—

“No!” Charlie screams, and covers her own face with her hands. 

And then she’s running. Gasping, she drops her hands. She’s on a sidewalk, running past a house she’s seen variations of at least eighty times before. And up ahead, one house that’s different, dark and shadowed, with a china doll on the grass and a pale hand reaching for it.

She’s back at the beginning.

 

**II.**  
 _Half my life’s in books' written pages  
Live and learn from fools and from sages_

The ground is moving under her feet, and Dorothy has to keep walking to stay upright. It isn’t easy, of course, because in the haunted wood there are hundreds of tangled roots and snags to catch and trip her. She thinks there might have been a path here at some point, but the ground is moving too fast for her to be able to stop and take stock. There are glittering red eyes pressing down on her from all sides, black birds sitting in the twisted branches, just waiting for her to lose her footing.

She turns a corner around a large tree, and everything stops. Dorothy nearly pitches forward, but she catches herself on the trunk. When she looks up, the birds are gone from the branches, but that’s because she’s not in the haunted wood anymore. The tree under her hand moves, and she jerks back from it.

It’s an apple tree now, craggy mouth snarling at her, branches swinging at her. Apples come flying at her from all angles, pelting her from head to toe. She grits her teeth and continues to move forward.

She can’t ever stop moving forward.

She pushes her way towards a clearing. The apple trees stop throwing their fruit, but that’s because there is a bigger problem to face. There’s an old woman standing there in the clearing, twisted and bent with age, long hair matted and knotted down her back. It’s the Witch of the West; Dorothy knows that it’s her, even though she’s never seen this woman before. Dorothy has a blade in her hands, but when she swings the witch blocks her with a sword.

The witch’s lips move, but no sounds comes out.

_I cut out her tongue._

Then the sword is alight, and the trees are burning around them.The witch stands stock still, black as coal, head thrown back like she’s laughing.

There are hands on her. Dorothy loses her footing at last, and when she scrambles up off the ground again, she’s standing on the yellow brick road. Her old companions, the freedom fighters, they’re there with her, but though she knows it’s them from the instant she lays eyes on them, their faces are strange. 

She can’t stay with them for very long, however. The bricks move under her feet, and she has to start walking again. She turns to wave at them, and when she does her foot comes down on something with a loud cracking sound.

Dorothy looks down and sees a tiny village, maybe as tall as her knees, sprawled around her. The houses are made of cups and sugar bowls and teapots. Most of them are cracked, some outright smashed. She can see bits and pieces of what used to be the inhabitants scattered around. There isn’t enough glue in all of Oz to put everyone back together.

She walks on, trying to ignore the way the china breaks under her feet. By the time she reaches what used to be the center of the village, she’s gritting her teeth so hard that they feel loose in her mouth. She forces herself to relax her jaw, and spits out broken fragments of her own teeth.

_Not again._

She makes herself keep moving, though the ground is solid and still under her feet, and pushing forward feels like she’s moving through molasses. The harder she pushes, the slower she seems to go, but her heart is pounding and she gasps for breath, like she’s been running for hours.

She trips and stumbles, and when she catches herself again she’s leaning against a white wall.

_This isn’t Oz._

Then Charlie’s there, hair blazing red, her face warm and familiar. It’s out of place with everything else she’s seen so far, enough that Dorothy is finally able to open her eyes and look around for real. She’s laid out in a bed, and her face is matted with blood, but she’s not hurt and her teeth are in place again. And Charlie’s there, the real Charlie. And Dorothy knows.

“This is a dream,” Dorothy tells her.

 

**III.**  
 _You know it's true, all the things come back to you_

Charlie skids to a stop, just outside the house. The vampire boy is there, just like before, teeth bared, the doll in his hands. She looks down at her own hands, which are suddenly holding a game controller and a teacup. 

“It’s a loop,” she says out loud. 

This time, though, she doesn’t just toss them away. The teacup is made of china too, she sees, its white sides printed with red flowers. Frowning, Charlie lifts the controller and smacks it into the edge of the cup, which shatters with a loud crack.

“Sheeth mathe off thina!” the vampire howls.

Charlie jumps forward, slashing the broken teacup across his throat before he even has a chance to throw the doll. Gurgling, he drops it, and Charlie catches it as his head rolls off and comes to a stop against the wall of the house. The wall seems to ripple, and the same door from before appears. 

“Dorothy,” Charlie croaks, and leaps for the doorknob.

But when the door opens, it’s different. The yellow brick road spools out in front of her, winding its way through the fields surrounding the Emerald City. The towers sparkle in the distance, and red flowers dot the green fields, seeming to dance in the wind. It’s Oz, that’s for sure. But there’s no fence, no corn, no orchard in the distance.

And no Dorothy.

“Of course,” Charlie mutters. “Of course she isn’t here. Because this is another fucking nightmare loop, and it has to get worse, so I won’t see her until—” 

She starts running again, her feet pounding on the yellow bricks. Dust flies up, obscuring her vision, and when it clears, she’s running through the gray halls of the bunker, her steps echoing around her. “Mushrooms,” she gasps, and makes for Sam’s room.

But Sam and Dean aren’t there. The covers are rumpled with the impressions of their bodies and lit by the soft glow of the television. There’s even a box with a half-eaten pizza in it, lying abandoned on the bed.

And there’s blood, shining on the walls.

“I’m not doing this!” Charlie shouts to the room. Her hands are clenched in fists, and her hair is coming out of the ponytail, frizzing around her face. She grapples for the gun, but she’s not wearing the gear from the hospital anymore; she’s back in her old regular Charlie-in-Oz clothes, faded and grass-stained and useless. She doesn’t even have the china doll anymore. 

“Fine,” she mutters, turning her back on the room. “Fine, because firing the gun would mean I am doing this. And I’m not. I’m not! I learned this lesson back with the djinn, dammit!” 

But for all her talk, she still bolts for the kitchen.

As she’d hoped, she finds herself back in the empty hospital. “First time I’ve ever wanted to come back here,” she quips. Her voice echoes back to her, shaky and distorted. Wrapping her arms around herself, she pads through the silent halls. No sign of the vampires, again, but she doesn’t trust that. She knows how this works. 

When she enters the patients’ room this time, the curtains are all drawn back, and she can see them now. Sam lies in the bed farthest from the door, his face black and blue, crimson blood staining his sheets in wet patches. Dean lies next to him, his face covered with machinery and so caked with dried blood she almost can’t recognize him. 

And Dorothy. Dorothy lies just a few feet away, her skin gray under the bruises, bloody slashes covering all her exposed skin. All three of them, her only real friends in the world, and the woman who is her world, now.

It’s always worse, every time.

“I have to let it happen,” Charlie whispers. “I can’t fight them or they’ll come and it’ll just get worse and worse and…” But she can’t do it. She dashes to Dorothy’s side, calling her name, shouting across the beds at Sam and Dean, begging all three of them to wake up. The door behind her rattles, but she doesn’t reach for the gun now hanging from her shoulder again. She just reaches for Dorothy and cradles her wan face between her hands.

“Please,” she whispers.

Color bursts across her vision, and Charlie falls back, gasping. There are trees in the room now, their branches snaking through the curtains and splitting the walls, leaves hanging so low their velvet green brushes her face. Surprised, she pushes them aside, and sees the hospital bed, cradled in roots bumping up through the floor. Dorothy’s still in it, still bloody, but—

She’s looking at Charlie.

“Dorothy?” Charlie whispers, and Dorothy moves, sitting up and impatiently brushing her hair back, her eyes never leaving Charlie’s face. Charlie moves closer, and Dorothy takes a deep breath. Her eyes kindle with sudden understanding.

“This is a dream,” Dorothy tells her.

“Yeah, I know,” Charlie says, relief making her voice shake. She’s broken the loop. And is apparently still asleep, which is strange, but she’s not going to argue about it.

Dorothy gets to her feet, a frown touching the corners of her mouth. She looks different now, still bloody, but whole. She’s Dorothy again. But she’s eyeing the walls like she’s waiting for them to attack, and maybe Charlie hasn’t broken the loop after all. 

“Dorothy?” she asks, getting to her own feet.

“This isn’t a normal dream.” Dorothy sounds worried. “Charlie—”

Flames flare to life a few feet away, and Charlie jumps, gasping. A woman is standing there, her wrinkled face stretched into a grin, a flaming sword clutched in one gnarled hand. She raises it, smirking, and swings the point at Charlie’s face. 

“Shit!” Charlie yelps, scrambling for the gun. “I’ve never dreamed about _that_!”

“It’s the Wicked Witch,” Dorothy growls, even though the woman looks nothing like the witch Charlie remembers. She’s taller and bonier, with much worse hair.

“Are you sure?” Charlie pants.

Dorothy doesn’t answer, just tosses her hair back and leaps for the witch, a glittering silver blade suddenly gripped in one hand. “Stay back!” she yells back over her shoulder, lifting the blade to strike. “She can’t hurt me!”

But Dorothy’s blow never lands; the old woman suddenly steps back into a swirling portal and vanishes. Fire crackles in the leaves overhead, filling the white room with smoke. “Come on!” Dorothy shouts, and then the two of them are running, running across fields of swaying grass, toward a strip of yellow brick just on the horizon. 

_What the hell just happened?_

When they reach the road, Dorothy slows to a stop. “Are you all right? The witch didn’t hurt you?”

“That woman looked nothing like her,” Charlie gasps. “Except for being, you know, old.”

“I know,” Dorothy says, sheathing her blade. “But that’s how it works when I dream. I know who everyone is, but they all look like strangers. No one looks like they do in real life. It’s like everyone is played by actors.” She looks at Charlie then, really looks at her. She even lifts one hand and touches a lock of Charlie’s hair, and Charlie forgets how to breathe, just for that moment. “But you’re you,” she says, quiet. “And that’s how I know. This isn’t a normal dream, Red. Far from it.”

Charlie swallows. “Then what is it?”

Dorothy looks out across the fields. The same fields Charlie saw earlier, she realizes, spotting the emerald towers in the distance. And the flowers, the red flowers spreading throughout the grass, growing thicker and thicker the closer they get to the Emerald City.

Even before she says it, Charlie knows.

Dorothy looks back at her, eyes blazing. “This is the poppies.”

 

**IV.**  
 _Isn't that the way? Everybody's got their dues in life to pay_

The blazing red of the poppies is brighter than she remembers; the yellow bricks and the shimmering city in the distance look painted and unreal. It’s not her Oz, the real Oz, but something else. She just hadn’t noticed until now, with Charlie standing next to her.

“The poppies,” Charlie repeats. “You said that it was bloodier than in the books.”

Dorothy turns to her. “Whatever happens to you in the poppy dreams happens in the waking world, too. If you die here, you die out there. In your sleep, without ever waking up.”

Charlie tips her head to the side, puts her hands on her hips in that “I’m thinking” pose Dorothy’s come to know. “So, how did you escape?”

“The book got that part right. The tin man and scarecrow pulled me free, but I had to fight my way through the dreams. The poison from the poppies tries to break you, make you give up.”

“What if we’re still in the poppy field? Can we wake up even if we fight our way out?”

“No. But it’s that or give up right now.” She smiles at Charlie. “You don’t seem like the giving up type to me, Red.”

Charlie’s face lights up. “Hell no.”

“Besides,” Dorothy continues, “I have a lot of enemies in Oz, but I also have a lot of friends. There’s a good chance someone will get us out of the fields, and all we have to do is hang on until they do.”

“So what do we do now?” Charlie asks.

It’s then that the ground moves again, and Dorothy is propelled forward. Charlie trips, but Dorothy catches her before she falls.

“We keep moving,” Dorothy tells her. They follow the road, but as soon as they round a hill of the blood-red poppies they’re closed in on all sides with white walls and cold tile floors. The hospital again. Dorothy looks over at Charlie for an explanation.

“Recurring nightmare,” she says with a shrug.

Dorothy doesn’t ask. It’s obviously something of a tender subject, but though she’s answered her share of questions about Oz and the reality of it versus the books that her father wrote, Dorothy isn’t exactly comfortable with asking Charlie about herself. There’s a time and place for things like that, and now isn’t that time.

They turn a corner in the hospital hallway, and they’re in the Men of Letters’ bunker. Dorothy looks around, trying to figure out which version of it this is: the one she remembers from 1935, or Charlie’s version in the future.

“Sam and Dean should be around here somewhere,” Charlie murmurs. “They were here the first time I was here.”

There are voices in the distance, arguing back and forth, but Dorothy can’t decided if it’s the Men of Letters or the hunting brothers. Two men walk past in an obvious hurry, and the shorter of the two calls over his shoulder, “Hey, where’s the pizza?”

Charlie takes a few steps after them, her mouth open. “Wait, was that supposed to be Sam and Dean?”

“I think so,” Dorothy replies. “Usually I just know who people are, but since this is a mix of both of our dreams, I can’t really be sure.”

“Dean’s _blond_.”

“I know.”

“And Sam’s huge! They look like your brain cast them out of a bad boys-love manga!”

“Boys-love what?”

“It’s, ah,” Charlie hesitates, “a romantic comic book with overly pretty boys.”

There’s more, Dorothy can tell, but she figures this is just another one of those things about the future that she’s going to have to get used to when they leave Oz. “All right, add that one to my list.”

Charlie grins at her. “After the internet, definitely, but before cat memes.”

They move on through the winding corridors. It’s like a maze, moreso than the real bunker, and every door they open leads to new hallways with new doors which lead to more corridors. 

“I think we’re lost,” Charlie says. She opens a door and starts to step through, but Dorothy grabs her arm to pull her back.

“Charlie! The floor!”

This hallway is different. There’s a wide chasm right where Charlie would have stood, too wide for them to jump across, and lined at the bottom with jagged knife-like shards of stone. Dorothy turns to go back, but the hallway behind them is gone, and they’re back in Oz again. There are trees on all sides, branches arching low.

“I know this,” Charlie says.

Dorothy nods. “We came this way just a few days ago.” But that was better. Out there in the real world, in familiar Oz, they’d talked and laughed as they took the winding path around the chasm, until they came across a bridge that someone had built in recent years. Now they don’t have the option of going around; the ground is moving them forward.

“We could get across if we had some rope,” Charlie muses. “Or if I had Sam again.”

“What does Sam have to do with—?”

But Charlie isn’t listening. She has a far-off look on her face, and then she says Sam’s name again, and dream-Sam is there. “Has anyone seen where Dean went?” he asks. Charlie reaches up for his hair, and a rope forms between her fingers, like magic.

“How are you doing that?” Dorothy asks.

“Dream logic,” she replies. “Well, and macrame. New hobby.” The rope made of Sam’s hair is more than long enough to loop over a branch, and together they swing across. When they reach the other side, both the chasm and Sam are gone.

 _It’s too easy_. Dorothy doesn’t say anything, though. Charlie’s smiling, and she doesn’t want anything to happen to take that smile away.

So of course something does.

There’s a hissing sound behind them, and the thundering of many heavy feet shaking the ground. They break into a run, but the thing chasing them is faster. It leaps up and over them, skitters to a halt on the road ahead, and then turns to face them.

“Why is it always giant fucking spiders?” Charlie moans next to her. The spider, bigger than an elephant, bigger than the one Dorothy remembers meeting in the real Oz, lunges forward, and they scatter, Charlie ducking to one side and Dorothy to another. The spider goes for Charlie’s side, great tree-trunk legs reaching for her.

“Red!” Dorothy has the blade in her hand, and she runs after the giant spider and jumps on its back. It squeals and rolls and tried to knock her off, but Dorothy has its thick coarse hair caught in her hands. She grits her teeth and climbs its back until she can see its neck, wasp-thin and fragile, and swings.

The head comes off easily, and rolls across the yellow bricks. The body stops moving immediately, and Dorothy jumps down from the corpse. Charlie stares at her, mouth agape, and Dorothy suddenly feels very warm.

“Damn, girl,” Charlie breathes.

Dorothy opens her mouth to say something, anything, but a body collides with hers before she can. Hot sour breath washes over her, and a decaying face pushes in close, snapping like a rabid dog. Dorothy tries to fight, but the creature is stronger than she is.

The blast of a shotgun point-blank nearly deafens her, but the rotting creature is knocked aside. Dorothy scrambles to her feet, pushing hair out of her face. Charlie has a shotgun in her hand, the barrel smoking slightly, and when she looks she sees there are more of those creatures, dotting the Oz landscape as far as Dorothy can see. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them.

“There aren’t any ghouls in Oz,” she pants.

“Those aren’t ghouls,” Charlie explains. “Those are zombies.”

“How do you kill them?”

Charlie pumps the barrel of her shotgun and replies with a grin, “This kind? Headshot.” She turns without another word and starts firing. The shotgun never runs out of ammunition, and Charlie never misses. One by one, the zombies fall and stop moving, but Dorothy isn’t really even looking at them. This is a part of Charlie’s dream; she can handle it, like Dorothy herself and the giant Oz spider.

Dorothy watches Charlie instead, watches her look of fierce concentration, watches the aim and recoil of the gun, watches the way the wind blows her hair, making it billow out like a bright red flag.

It’s over too quickly. Charlie turns to her and smiles, suddenly shy.

“Good work,” Dorothy says, because it would be strange not to say anything after that. She dusts herself off, reaches up to try to pin her hair back in place. It doesn’t work, and soon her hair has completely fallen down, and her pins are a twisted mangled mess. When she looks back to Charlie, she has a thoughtful expression in place.

“You know,” Charlie says, “I’ve been wondering about this. Why were we in the poppy fields? I can’t remember.”

The memory is vague, nagging. “You went in after something,” Dorothy says. “I think I remember that.”

Charlie snaps her fingers. “The china girl! Something was trying to smash the china girl!”

And Dorothy can see it in her head, the blood red poppies, the little girl made of china, and an army of glittering metal insects closing in on her. Dorothy can hear the crack of china breaking, hear the little china girl’s wails, and see Charlie’s expression of pure determination.

Dorothy loves that look.

“Did we save her?” Charlie asks.

“I think so,” Dorothy replies. “I don’t really remember. When we get out, I guess we’ll find out.”

They have less of a reprieve this time. Trees crowd in around them, branches scrabbling and reaching for Charlie. Dorothy has to hack the branches back with her blade until it all stops. Once Charlie is free, a transparent young man appears, his fingers like icy needles, curling into Dorothy’s chest, paralyzing her. Charlie suddenly has a fireplace poker, and she swings it through the ghost, and it vanishes.

“I’m noticing a theme,” Dorothy observes, as soon as she can breathe properly again.

“What do you mean?”

“The chasm, the spider, those trees? Those are from my dreams. And I’m guessing that the zombies and the ghost are from yours.”

Charlie nods. “So?”

“So, poppy dreams are meant to break you. They’re what scares you most, even if you don’t realize it when you’re awake.” She looks at Charlie’s face, at her bright eyes and her determined look, and knows exactly why the dreams have taken the tack they have. She takes a deep breath. “Don’t you think it’s odd that you keep saving me from your dreams and I keep saving you from mine?”

Charlie stares at her, her cheeks flushing until they’re almost as red as her hair. “Dorothy,” she says slowly. “Are you saying—?”

 

**V.**  
 _You got to lose to know how to win_

It’s the most important question of Charlie’s life, awake or asleep, and (of _course_ ) she doesn’t get a chance to finish it. Something smashes into her from the side, cutting her off mid-sentence and sending her flying through the air. Ugly laughter follows her.

“Charlie!” she hears Dorothy shout above it.

Pain — real, terrible pain — explodes throughout her body. Whatever she’s hit, it’s solid, hard and unyielding. A wall, she thinks, dazed. She slides down it, crying out as it seems to jab into her in several places before she lands in a heap at its base. A wall with teeth, then. Man, poppy dreams sure are fucked up, she thinks, letting out a breathy little giggle. 

“Charlie,” Dorothy gasps, skidding onto her knees next to her. 

Charlie manages to lift her head and gives Dorothy her best attempt at a smile. “Hey,” she says weakly. “See you next fall?”

Dorothy shakes her head, huffing out a laugh, and touches Charlie’s cheek. “You’ll be all right, Red.” 

Charlie leans her head into Dorothy’s touch. “What happened?”

“Hammer-heads,” Dorothy says, grim, and the ugly laughter washes over them again. Charlie sees one of them then, its huge flat head appearing in the air over Dorothy’s shoulder. It’s too far away to actually reach them, but it leers at Charlie, head wobbling on its stretched-out neck, before vanishing again. 

So that’s what hit her. Charlie makes a face. “I thought they guarded the south — never mind. Dream.” 

“There are too many of them. We’ll never make it out that way. And if you get thrown again—” Dorothy’s expression falters, a flash of true fear tightening her eyes before she sets her jaw, determined. “We’re not risking it.”

She leans in close, and god, Charlie wants to kiss her, wants to put her hands in that long thick hair — still loose, and damn, it’s gorgeous like that — and pull her in close. And there’s a chance, isn’t there? That Dorothy will kiss her back? But then Dorothy touches Charlie’s brow, and her fingers come away red.

“Come on, let’s get you fixed up,” Dorothy says, helping her sit up and lean back against whatever she hit. It’s a long high wall, mostly smooth and white, but with spiderwebs of black cracks spiraling over its surface. 

“The china wall?” Charlie asks, noticing with vague interest that some of the cracks have jagged pieces of broken china sticking out from them. A few of them, the ones closest to her, are tipped in red. Not teeth, then. “Where the china people live?” She starts giggling again, wincing as pain shoots through her back. “Wow, that sounds terrible. Porcelain people? That’s better, right?”

Dorothy rips a strip of cotton from her shirt. “I was there earlier,” she says, dabbing the fabric against Charlie’s temple. Her face is even closer now, her dark eyes only inches from Charlie’s, her full lips so close Charlie can almost feel them. “As far as I know, in the real world it’s not broken like that.” She ties the strip in a knot around Charlie’s head and then rips off another. “There, that looks good. Kind of rakish.” She smiles.

“Good,” Charlie mumbles. Dorothy’s fingers are warm on her skin, and suddenly all Charlie wants to do is curl up in her arms and sleep. But they’re not out of the woods yet, both figuratively and literally. (Well, only sort of literally, given that they’re in a dream. But still.)

Dorothy ties the second strip around her bicep and then helps her to her feet. Her body protests, and Charlie grits her teeth, but she manages it. “Turn around,” Dorothy says, her voice huskier than usual, and Charlie obeys, turning to face the broken china wall. A shiver runs through her when she feels Dorothy lift the back of her shirt. “Only scratches,” she murmurs, and Charlie feels a trace of a touch against the small of her back. Her breath catches in her chest.

Then an ear-splitting roar shatters the woods.

“Please tell me that was your friend who got turned into a lion,” she begs.

Dorothy shakes her head, grim, and draws the silver blade. “Kalidah,” she says. There’s fear on her face now, open and naked, and she steps in front of Charlie with the blade held high. “They’re the worst Oz has to offer, and they’re going to go after you.” Her voice breaks on the last word. “Charlie, stay behind me. Please.”

Kalidah. Body of a bear, head of a tiger, and claws so long and sharp they could cut a lion in two, Charlie remembers. But all she knows about them is what’s in the books. She’s never actually seen one, not in the real Oz, even though she’s been there for months now. Dorothy had told her that that was a good thing, but Charlie hadn’t agreed. 

Until now.

Another roar, and there it is, its fanged tiger’s mouth open in a snarl, its claws extended. The book, if anything, played them down; the claws are longer even than Dorothy’s blade, with razor sharp tips, and Charlie can’t see how Dorothy could possibly battle it. The Kalidah stands heads higher than either of them, big as a grizzly and twice as nasty. (And that’s saying a lot, given what Charlie knows of grizzlies.)

The silver mark on Dorothy’s forehead blazes, and she swings the blade, shearing it through the nearest set of outstretched claws. The tips fall to the ground, and the Kalidah roars and swipes at her with the other set. Dorothy grabs Charlie and pulls them both down, and the claws slice into the china wall with a terrible screech.

The Kalidah hisses and pulls free, causing pieces of the wall to break off and tumble around them. It bares its fangs and lunges, not for Dorothy, but for Charlie, even though she’s half underneath Dorothy. Just like everything else.

 _Maybe there’s a reason for that_.

“No!” Dorothy cries, stabbing upward with the blade. It slides into the Kalidah’s chest, so easily that Dorothy’s hand ends up half inside of it before she yanks it back out. The Kalidah hisses and then dissolves into mist, blowing away in seconds. 

“I assume that doesn’t happen if you meet a real one,” Charlie remarks, and Dorothy barks out a laugh and grabs her up into a hug.

“It’s definitely not usually that easy,” she agrees, her breath tickling the hairs on Charlie’s neck. “Come on, Red, let’s get the hell out of here.”

They go deeper in the woods, leaving the hammer-heads and the broken china wall behind. The trees grow close here, and Charlie catches occasional glimpses of stark white walls between their creeping branches. Before she can talk herself out of it, she reaches for Dorothy’s hand. Their fingers meet, tangle, and clasp, and Charlie nearly laughs with giddiness. Dorothy looks at her sidelong, a faint smile playing on those lips, and squeezes her hand. 

Then everything goes dark.

“Dorothy?” Charlie whispers, but Dorothy’s hand is gone. She reaches out, trying to find her, but there’s nothing, nothing but rough bark and the brush of vines and the sound of howling, far in the distance. No, Charlie thinks. No, Dorothy was right there, not a foot from her. She couldn’t have just vanished. 

She sweeps her arms in a circle, scraping her palms over bark and thorns, calling Dorothy’s name. But Dorothy never answers, and this is it. This is her worst fear.

“Dorothy,” she whispers, terror clenching at her chest. The howling is louder now, and Charlie can hear buzzing overhead, gathering in intensity, punctuated by the flapping of wings and the frenzied cawing of birds. Wolves and black bees and crows, she thinks. The armies of the Wicked Witch, produced by the poison of the poppies, coming for her. 

They’re close now, so close she can feel the brush of wings stirring the air, hear the clack of beaks and the padding of paws over the ground. She can feel the sting of the bees, buzzing over her skin. She can feel the poppies, trying to scare her, trying to hurt her or break her.

But the joke’s on them. She’s not afraid of them. She’s not afraid of anything except losing the people she loves. And if the Witch’s armies are coming for her, if this attack is like the others, then Dorothy’s still here, somewhere.

Charlie just has to find her.

She holds out her hands. Time to make her own dream logic work for her. “Light!” she commands, then adds, “Saber!” She wants to see, yes, but she also wants to kick the ass of anything between her and Dorothy. 

But it’s not a lightsaber that appears in her hands. A moment later, she’s weighed down by what she’s pretty sure is a sword. It’s glowing, just a little, the blade moving with the pale impression of flames. The one the witch-who-wasn’t-the-witch had, Charlie realizes. The flaming sword. Good enough.

“Flame on,” she whispers, and fire bursts from the blade. Orange light spills through the trees, and Charlie swings the sword, slicing it across leaves and bark and the black wings of crows. A branch overhead bursts into blame, the fire racing along its length to set another alight, until the entire canopy overhead is burning. 

Shrieking, the birds retreat, and the buzzing dims, the bees darting away from her in all directions. She can see the eyes of the wolves, gleaming red in the light, winking out one by one as they retreat.

And she can see Dorothy, standing not ten feet from her, her wide eyes fixed on Charlie’s face. “Dorothy!” she cries, and she drops the sword and runs to her. 

Dorothy meets her halfway, her hands grabbing for Charlie’s, her loose dark hair streaming behind her. “I couldn’t find you!” she gasps, so obviously rattled that Charlie stops in surprise. “I couldn’t find you, and I could hear them coming, and I couldn’t _do_ anything—”

“I’m fine,” Charlie gasps. “Dorothy—”

Dorothy cups Charlie’s face in her hands and leans their foreheads together. “Charlie,” she whispers, and then her lips are on Charlie’s and her arms are wrapped around her and they’re swaying, their mouths fastened together while the flames roar overhead. Nothing can scare her now, Charlie thinks as she deepens the kiss, winding her fingers in Dorothy’s soft hair.

And Charlie wakes up.

 

**VI.**  
 _Dream until the dream comes true_

There’s a voice rambling in the distance.

Her eyelids feel like boulders, but Dorothy forces herself to open them. It’s Oz, the real Oz, strange and unpredictable and familiar Oz. Dorothy breathes out for a moment, then remembers. “Charlie!”

“Oh my goodness,” babbles a little china girl. “I’m so glad the two of you are awake! I was getting so worried and I thought that you would never wake up because of those silly poppies! That would be a terrible thing to happen after you rescued me so bravely! I nearly cracked my fingers off wringing my hands over this—”

Charlie’s laid out on the yellow bricks next to her, warm and solid and real, eyes fluttering open. Her bandages are gone, but the cuts and bruises from the dreams are still there. “Hey,” Charlie says faintly, “we’re awake.”

Dorothy leans over her, presses their mouths together, like in the dreams, but this time it’s real. Charlie’s warm and pliant under her hands, mouth open, fingers catching in Dorothy’s hair.

“—Oh, and I want to thank you so very much for saving me from those nasty metal insects! I was on the yellow brick road with my family, you know, we were coming to Emerald City to visit some friends and also maybe to see the Great Dorothy since she’s returned to us again, and those nasty wicked things chased me off the road into the poppies! I think they were hoping that I’d fall asleep, but of course that can’t happen, but I did fall and break my legs. That was when the Great Dorothy’s friend ran out to help—”

When she pulls back again, Charlie’s smiling. “You meant it,” she says.

“Why on earth would I say something and not mean it?” Dorothy leans in to kiss Charlie again, but Charlie’s eyes go wide and she pushes Dorothy back so she can sit up. For a moment Dorothy thinks she went too far, that this is the point where Charlie demands to go back to the real world and leave both Oz and Dorothy forever.

“—Oh, it was so brave chasing those insects away, but then she fell asleep, and then you fell asleep, and I was lying there wondering what I could do about all of it, and I managed to crawl over to your bag, and luckily you had glue, but of course you had glue, you’re the Great Dorothy! Anyway, I glued my legs back on, and then I tried to pull you back out of the poppies, but I wasn’t strong enough. So I ran out and got my family, and we all started to pull you out, but it was going so slow, and we thought that you might die before we got to the edge, and then these things kept happening to you, bruises and cuts and all that terrible business—”

“Wait!” Charlie exclaims. “ _Why_ did we wake up? It’s not like we defeated that dream, I mean, the trees were on _fire_ and all.”

“—And I thought that we couldn’t glue you back together, so I started to cry, and then out of nowhere came all of these mice! And they said that they owed the Great Dorothy a life debt and all together all of us managed to pull you out, and then we laid you on the yellow brick road, and we’ve been waiting and waiting and now you’re awake again!”

Dorothy has an idea. “I think it was the kiss,” she explains. “Oz is a fairyland, after all.”

“True love’s kiss,” Charlie murmurs. She turns shy again, cheeks flushing pink. “Are you?”

“Your true love?” Dorothy cups Charlie’s face in her hands. “I sure as hell hope so.”


End file.
